Last night, Annabelle got out the “art box” Trish gave her for her birthday. (A brilliant gift idea, damn Trish, she always comes up with the simplest and best ideas — she and Abbie went to the art supply story and filled a ”real” art box with “real” artist materials. I shamelessly steal from Trish; just decided [...]

Ray’s last words, as I climbed into the car this morning (after admonishing me to not use swear words on the phone, in the car, in front of the kids): “You are a word that begins with the letter H.” Oh, he’s right. I am hysterical. I called this, months ago, as soon as I [...]

OK, this isn’t my typical fare, I’ll admit. Someday I’ll get up the guts to post “Pink Slip”. (Curious? it’s on YouTube.) Tonight, here is something I found on a blog run by a woman named Jessica. Her daughter, Sophia, is a little older than my Sophie, and Jessica had some sage advice (you can [...]

At lunch yesterday, Ray and I mused about whether we should put a micro-chip in Sophie, the way people do with pets. He claims this really goes on in Russia, where kidnapping rates were so high. I brought up safeytat.com again. It was all idle chatter, til the phone rang a couple hours later. I [...]

At the meeting yesterday with Sophie’s kindergarten teacher and the special ed teacher, we talked about strategies for getting Sophie to behave. We didn’t talk about strategies for getting other kids’ parents to behave. And I’m the first to admit my reaction here is likely super-premature and overly sensitive in an It’s All About Me way, [...]

Quite a bit happened today, not all of it good, so I think i’ll focus on one of the pure, joyous moments of childhood and parenthood: the loss of a tooth. This was Annabelle’s third tooth. Sophie insists she has loose teeth that are going to fall out “in 15 minutes” but so far, only AB [...]

I should really be asleep by now. In a few short hours, I’ve got an early morning meeting with the special education teacher at Sophie’s school — I need to try to convince her that even though my kid’s got an IQ of 86, she deserves time in the “resource room” without letting her think Sophie [...]

I begged Ray to watch Sophie on Friday night. “Oh come on,” he said. “She’ll LOVE the piano concert. You can watch both of them, no problem.” Annoyingly, Ray is almost always right, so why was I surprised when, in fact, Sophie did love the piano concert? The both part — that’s where he was [...]

I know this is sort of recycling, but I thought I’d share what I wrote for my grandfather’s memorial service, which was yesterday. He died August 14 at 94. He had a very long life. I wonder if he would say it was a good one. I hope so. He certainly did it his way, [...]

Before I had kids, I told people I was having kids so I could have a legitimate reason to shop at Baby Gap. I sort of meant it. I mean, that’s not the only reason, but yeah, it was a reason. I still enjoy a good pass through a BG; just made one the other day. [...]